


Perfect Soldier, Good Man

by 401



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Bucky Barnes Returns, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Eventual Romance, Eventual Smut, Flashbacks, Guilt, M/M, Physical Abuse, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Steve Rogers Angst, Violence, submissive bucky barnes
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-11-30
Updated: 2015-12-04
Packaged: 2018-05-04 05:23:14
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 5,688
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5322050
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/401/pseuds/401
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bucky Barnes returns, he knows nothing but violence and humiliation. He needs Steve, now more than ever.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. When you are Ready

“Steve,” Natasha’s voice was solid, unreadable, “He’s here.”

The past weeks had been difficult ones. The incident on the bridge had blown the stalling Winter Soldier files wide open, along with wounds and scars that Steve Rogers had thought that he had sealed if not patched up suitably since Bucky had fallen.

That name that had seemed so alien to the man on the bridge had been ploughing through the Captains head, fresh and raw endlessly. Sleep had become an enigma, something that only creeped up on Steve when he was sitting up against the door of his apartment waiting for the sound of metal knuckles knocking or when he was reading through the few files that Hydra had kept concerning Bucky for the thousandth time.

So when Natasha stood in the doorway of the SHEILD Rec Room with the look on her face that Steve only saw when something heavy was happening he wasted no time in sprinting down the polished white hallways alongside the redhead to see what he had wanted to see for decades.

“He’s in a pretty bad way,” Natasha warned, her voice jarring with the motion of her jog, “High anxiety, paranoia, rage response, amnesia, malnut…”  


“Can I see him?” Steve interrupted.

The fatigue of the last few weeks had lessened Steve’s ability to mince his words. He had been so wholly focused on seeing Bucky again that little else seemed important.

“Not up close, Steve,” Nat sighed, “It’s for your safety.”  


Steve gritted his teeth and huffed out a short breath. Safety was something he was willing to sacrifice at this point.

There had been nights in the last few years when safety had meant nothing. Nights when if he could have gotten drunk he would have drunk himself stupid if it had meant his dreams about Bucky would feel real, times when he had thought that throwing himself off of that train with Bucky would have been less painful. He would have risked all sorts of safety on those nights.

The room that Bucky was being kept in was inconspicuous; more like an office than a holding cell. It was haloed by a team of armed officers and there was a large window that Steve assumed was one way. Dr Banner and Stark were sitting outside the room looking at two screens. One had the rhythmic blue line of a heart monitor and the other had an image that took a few seconds for Steve to identify. It was a pulsing, walnut shaped ball of colour and movement. A brain scan.

Steve walked up to the glass and put his hands on it. Bucky was sitting on the small bed on the other side of the cell. Steve was happy that they had not tried to pull the same shit with Bucky as they had with him; the room was not disguised as anything, just a bed, a nightstand and a small bookcase full of magazines and encyclopaedias. Bucky’s knees were pulled to his chest, he was resting his chin on them and his hands were clasped over his ears in tight fists. The knuckles on his flesh hand were white and taut with stress, grazed from fighting and bruised dark purple.

“Please,” Steve was surprised that his voice worked at all, “Can I see him, just for a while?”

Tony went to speak but instead pulled a face of cautious pity and turned to Bruce.

“Cap I…” Bruce sighed and stood up, leading Steve to the edge of the room with a gentle hand on his shoulder.

“He’s not in a good way, Steve,” Bruce’s voice was hushed, “The scans are showing deprivation damage. He’s been deprived of touch, well, pretty much every sensation besides pain. His anxiety levels are through the roof, he’s put two of the support officers in hospital this morning alone, we can’t guarantee he won’t lash out at you.”

Steve squeezed his hands into fists in his pockets, letting the feeling of his fingernails digging into his palms stifle the tight, achy tears in the back of his throat. He looked down at his feet to mask the reddening in his cheeks.

“I can guarantee it,” Steve muttered, “He remembered me, on the bridge he…”

“He also tried to kill you, Cap,” Bruce put his hands on Steve’s shoulders firmly.

“Look,” Bruce sighed, “I know how much this hurt, maybe I don’t but I can guess, but the last time Bucky saw you, his mission was to kill you and at the moment, he is really struggling to cope without a mission.”  


Steve took a slow breath. Rationality was something he was good at, most of the time, but Bucky was a different matter. He would lose this job, the shield, the title, anything. He would lose anything for this man.

“Bruce, I don’t know what I can say to change your mind…” Steve’s voice trailed uncomfortably into silence.

He looked at Bruce for a moment. There was something earnest about Bruce that put Steve at ease in a way that was not quite matched by anyone else on the team. There were no hidden agendas or egotism with him, he meant what he said, and everything he said was true. This made Steve’s decision easier.

“Hey, come here a sec,” Steve sighed, guiding Bruce further from the group.

“If it was Natasha in there,” Steve whispered, “You’d love her, enough to risk it all to see her?”

Bruce opened his mouth to reply but just nodded slowly.

“Yes…” He admitted, “But you and Bucky are different, me and Nat are together.”

Steve shook his head and smiled, angling himself purposely away from Tony’s expression of curiosity from ten feet away.

“Um, Bruce?” Steve cleared his throat, “It’s actually kind of the same.”

Steve watched with reserved amusement as Bruce’s face went through all of the different stages of realisation of what Steve had just told him.

“ _Oh_ ,” Bruce smiled, “Really didn’t get that vibe from you, Cap.”

Steve shrugged.

“It was a long time ago,” Steve muttered, “Still hurts just as much.”

Bruce nodded, and looked back to the cell nervously.

“Ten minutes, Steve,” He relented, “Any anger, anything at all, you leave immediately.”

Steve nodded and patted Bruce’s shoulder thankfully.

“Bruce?”

Dr Banner turned back to the Captain.

“Don’t tell the team what I told you, not yet,” Steve whispered.

Banner nodded understandingly and opened the cell door with a hiss of machinery.

 

 

Steve stepped into the secure room, closing the door behind him gently to avoid making the soldier in front of him flinch.

“Steve Rogers,” Bucky stated flatly, staring at the space between them, jogging his knee up and down anxiously, eyes trained on the shiny blue plastic of the floor like his life depended on it. No eye contact with a mark.

Steve nodded, smiling at the sign of memory, or at least partial recognition of who he was.

“Yeah, Buck,” Steve said quietly, keeping his voice low, “That’s my name.”

Bucky took a slow breath and the repetitive shaking of his knee stopped.

“I’m sorry about your cheek,” Bucky apologised, his eyes not moving from the floor.

Steve’s hand found what was left of the bruising and grazing on his left cheek and ran his fingertips over it. The pain was still there, but minimal; he had forgotten about it amidst the chaos of the last few weeks.

“Don’t worry about any of that,” Steve sighed.

He tilted his head, a passive attempt at getting some eye contact from the man in front of him. The attempt was futile, but then Steve realised how he was standing.

Bucky was a good four feet lower down than him like this, sitting on the small single bed with his head down. Steve was in front of him and fully upright. He could see how that could be quite intimidating to someone who had spent long enough being dominated and effectively owned. Steve slowly lowered himself into a sitting position on the floor. He could almost hear Natasha in his head whispering “ _Steve, you idiot_ ,” for making himself vulnerable.

Bucky’s shoulders slowly dropped. He raised his head a little. He was looking down at Steve now, at the top of his head. He liked the way that when he got closer, he could see that his hair was so many more colours than at a distance. It was almost brown in some places, and when the florescent overhead lights hit it, the strands would turn near silver.

There was a chain around his neck too, tucked into his t-shirt so that the pendant was invisible. Bucky knew that chain, the clasp was a screw, and you twisted it together like a bottle cap until it clicked. He reached out and hooked his finger under the chain, but pulled back like an elastic when he realised the intrusion, feeling the heat of the skin of Steve’s neck against his knuckles. Bucky felt his face turn crimson as the Captain looked up at him, surprised by the touch.

“You can look at it if you want,” Steve pulled the chain over his head and let it fall like a coiled rope into the palm of Bucky’s right hand.

Bucky looked down at his palm, and at the coiled, tarnished silver chain pooled in the hollow of his hand. There was indeed a pendant, two actually. Two engraved rectangular tickets of metal, identical in size and shape. Bucky read them to himself:

_Steven Grant ROGERS_

_Captain. 107 th_

_Rh Positive_

_Catholic_

Bucky looked up at Steve and was met with a nod of reassurance and permission to read the second dog tag.

_James Buchanan BARNES_

_Sergeant. 107 th_

_O Negative_

_Catholic_

The name on the tag made Bucky’s stomach flinch uncomfortably.

“Me?” He looked at Steve again, desperate for explanations.

Steve nodded, sliding the dog tag off of the chain and pressing it into Bucky’s palm.

“You said my name was Bucky,” Bucky frowned, “Not James.”  


Steve smiled.

“Look,” He whispered, standing up slowly and smoothly to avoid a shock and sitting next to Bucky on the bed.

“You’re middle name’s Buchanan,” Steve pointed at the dog tag, “Everyone called you Bucky from that.”

Bucky nodded, relaxing a little at the confirmation.

“What did they call you?” Bucky asked, looking Steve dead in the eye for the first time since he had walked in.

“Well,” Steve thought back, “Half-pint, mouse, titch…short-ass came up a few times too actually.”

Steve chuckled at the look of confusion on Bucky’s face.

“I wasn’t always 6’ 2’’,” Steve explained, “Can you remember me small, before the serum?”

Serum. That rang a bell in Bucky’s mind.

_“There are a series of infusions we are going to carry out, Sergeant Barnes,” The doctor overlooking Bucky moved another thick needle into place over Bucky’s chest, “The pain will be nothing compared to what you have already endured.”_

_Bucky closed his eyes and bit down on a scream as all twenty needled pushed past his skin and into raw muscle emptying their contents into his bloodstream._

“Bucky?” Steve put a cautious hand on the soldier’s knee and watched as the vacant tracking of his eyes turned to discomfort.

“They hurt you like that too?” Bucky asked, voice climbing a little with the anxiety of the unwanted memory, “All of those needles?”

Steve nodded and rolled up his sleeve, pointing to a line of four almost invisible, tiny, silvery, circular scars on his forearm.

“Got them on my chest too,” Steve patted his chest and rolled his sleeve down.

Bucky offered his own forearm, the flesh one. There were similar marks, but they were darker and there were more of them, arranged more sporadically. They scars were tiny triangles, unlike Steve’s circles.

“All over me,” Bucky explained, looking back at the floor.

There was a beeping tone over the speaker on the other side of the room.

“Time’s up, Cap,” Tony’s voice sounded into the room, metallic and tinny over the speakers.

Steve sighed and stood up. Bucky looked up at him and frowned.

“Why are they making you leave?” Bucky’s voice did not give up how he felt about Steve’s departure, but the Captain let himself think that he wanted him to stay, for his own comfort more than anything else.

Steve hesitated. Bucky was calm. There was no sign of aggression in anything the soldier was doing. Steve did not want him to feel like the unstable, dangerous liability he was being made out to be.

“They want you to get some sleep,” Steve lied, putting a cautious hand on Bucky’s left shoulder.

The metal felt odd through a t-shirt. Where Steve’s fingers would expect dense, warm muscle he was met with solid plates of cool titanium through the cotton.

Bucky looked at Steve’s hand before putting his right one on top of it gingerly, the heat of Steve’s skin seeming to burn into his palm like a cattle brand; he was hyperaware of the touch,

“You’ll come back?” Bucky asked, releasing the Captain’s hand, “If I sleep?”

Steve nodded.

“Whenever you’re ready.”


	2. I'll be Here

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> nightmares

_“Knees.”_

_The Asset obeyed shakily, dropping to his knees with an unsteady wobble. The concrete was cool against his bare knees and the tops of his feet dug into the floor painfully. The bonds holding his hands behind his back were chafing so much that it was easier to stay still than to move at all. The Asset knew that he could break these ropes easily; it would take him seconds to snap the thick rope laced between his flesh wrist and his mechanical one, but the punishment was not worth it. He stayed still. He stayed silent._

_“You failed your training earlier this afternoon,” The handler stated blandly, linking his gloved hands in front of him neatly._

_It was true. He had failed his training. They had bought in a hostage, a man off of the street. Maurice, his name was. He was a fruit vendor, fifty maybe, with a thick grey moustache and eyebrows that moved when he spoke. They had tied his hands just like Bucky’s and stood him in the centre of the room. Bucky had walked into the small concrete room and one of the handlers had pressed a small pistol into his hands. Bucky had watched as Maurice’s chest had rocked with sobs at the knowledge of his fate and a prayer for mercy had left the man’s dry throat._

_“Deliver an elimination shot,” The handler had ordered._

_Bucky had looked at Maurice and lined up his shot, feeling the tang of acid in his throat and a wave of nausea hit him. His hands had lost all strength. He lowered the gun and spat in the handler’s face._

_“You failed your training and you will be subject to behavioural enforcement,” The gloved handler reiterated._

_He was circling Bucky like a vulture. He was a slight man, thin and wiry with a greasy slick of sparse hair desperately scraped over his balding head. His lips were pink and full, covered in spit that would spray in Bucky’s face when he spoke too close. Bucky looked at the handler’s neck and thought about how temptingly crushable it was and questioned momentarily why he was still kneeling on the concrete instead of spilling the bastards brains. That was when he delivered the first shock._

_The handler pressed the electrical device against Bucky’s temple. He wanted to scream, but his jaw locked as the wave of white-hot agony prickled its way down his spine._

_“Repeat,” The handler ordered calmly, “I will respect my superiors.”_

_Bucky gritted his teeth stubbornly in refusal._

_Another bolt. Bucky keeled forward, growling a scream through his teeth and tasting blood at the sides of his tongue._

_“Say it,” The handler’s wet mouth twisted into a cruel smile._

_Bucky set his jaw as tears ran down his cheeks. He would say shit if they clawed it out of his mouth._

_Another bolt. He keeled forward again, closing his eyes as the third surge of pain engulfed him. He sobbed silently, feeling uncomfortable warmth spread over his freezing legs as a puddle of urine formed underneath him._

_“I will respect my superiors,” Bucky croaked finally, shivers taking over his body._

_The handler smiled and cocked his head._

_“Now that was not too difficult was it?” He cooed sickeningly, “Just make less of a mess next time.”_

_The handler grimaced in exaggerated disgust at Bucky’s wet shorts before delivering one final bolt in the middle of Bucky’s back._

_The soldier slumped onto his side as the pain made him slip into merciful unconsciousness._

Bucky’s eye’s snapped open. The room was dimly lit and the digital clock on the other side of the cell read 3:34am. He sat up and pulled his shirt over his head, the sweat soaked fabric catching on his skin like cling wrap. He closed his eyes and rubbed hard, until the apples of his cheeks stung and flushed. His heart throbbed in his chest like a metronome set to high, an uncomfortable crescendo in his head.

“You all good there, Frosty?” The voice came over the speakers, Tony.

“Heart rate’s looking pretty hasty on our monitor,” he continued, “Tell us if you’re gonna’ spontaneously combust or…whatever.”

Bucky was too scared to be annoyed at the man on the other side of the one way glass. The dream had not worn off.

“Steve,” Bucky swallowed thickly, “Can you call Steve Rogers please?”

There was a pause on the speakers. _Radio silence._

“I know it’s late,” Bucky continued, “But he said he was staying in the building tonight.”

A little prickle of embarrassment caught in Bucky’s throat as the radio remained silent. The request was unreasonable; it was the middle of the night and Steve was a Captain. A superior officer. Bucky would be the least of his worries.

“I ran,” Steve stated breathlessly, opening the door so quickly it made Bucky jump.

Bucky smiled as Steve crossed the room and sat on the end of the bed, just like earlier that day.

“You look like hell,” Steve’s face fell to one of concern, “Tell me.”

Bucky opened his mouth to speak but let it close slowly again when he realised he did not know where to start. He was scared, he was angry, he was tired and he as confused. The reasons for the separate feelings overlapped, bringing more of each as they did. It was a mess that he did not want to start cleaning up, but Steve’s order was an order. _Tell me._

“I’m scared,” Bucky whispered, wincing at how weak the confession sounded.

He should have been punished for that.

_The Asset does not feel fear._

Bucky felt a bubble of panic rise in his throat.

“I’m sorry,” He shook his head, gripping his hands together tightly, pinching the skin of his right one with the metal fingers of his left. The pain grew to numbness after a few moments so he shifted the position, renewing the sensation.

Steve frowned and put his hand between Bucky’s, breaking the grip and saving the skin from eventual breakage.

“Don’t hurt yourself,” Steve rubbed the small welt left by the titanium digits, “Please don’t, Buck.”

Bucky nodded and balled his hands into fists.

“You can be scared,” Steve reassured.

Bucky shook his head and tightened the fists.

“Well, I’m a Captain,” Steve took Bucky’s hand gently and slowly, “And I’m allowing you to be scared.”  


Bucky let his shoulders drop. The shivers he’d be holding back hit him. Steve squeezed his hand a little tighter and shuffled close enough that the sides of their thighs touched.

“And if you’re gonna’ be scared,” Steve nudged him amiably, “You’re not going to be scared all by yourself.”

Bucky smiled and shifted back into a lying position, finger’s still laced with Steve’s.

 

“I’ll be here when you wake up,” Steve promised.

Bucky closed his eyes. He would not want it any other way.

 

 


	3. Never Stopped

“You stayed.”

Steve opened his eyes and flexed his neck and shuffled in his spot on the floor with his back up against Bucky’s bed.

“Of course I stayed,” Steve yawned, “I said I would, didn’t I?”

Bucky nodded and sat up, cross-legged behind Steve, looking at the top of the Captain’s head.

“We’ve sat like this before,” Bucky frowned in confusion at the vague memory, “Something like this…”

Steve spun himself around so that he was sitting facing Bucky. He thought back, trying to remember what Bucky was remembering to no avail.

“When it was really cold,” Bucky continued, staring off at the wall behind Steve vacantly.

“Sick!” He finally pulled together, “Someone was really sick.”

Steve smiled, realising the scenario Bucky was trying to describe.

“When I got sick in Brooklyn,” Steve laughed, “Is that what you meant?”

Bucky nodded slowly, still troubled by something unreachable and hazy in the mess of memories and snippets of thought strewn through his head.

“When I had asthma attacks,” Steve continued, “You’d sit next to my bed for hours to make sure I was alright. I’d make such a fuss trying to get you to go and get some sleep. In the end you’d just…well usually you’d end up getting in with me.”  


Steve felt a betraying heat in his cheeks. He did not know how much Bucky remembered about their relationship. There was an insecurity in the Captain that was terrified that he soldier’s feelings for him would be lost, that they would have slipped away with all of the memories and habits and traits that Hydra had stolen from him. Bucky probably had not thought about anything to do with it for years. The thought of Bucky never loving him the way he did again made Steve’s chest hurt, a deep heaviness that brought tears if he dwelled on it for too long. He had worked hard to put it out of his mind for both of their sakes.

“You always got so cold,” Bucky muttered sadly, staring at Steve and through him at the same time, “You used to wear my sweaters, they came down to your thighs.”

Steve nodded, chuckling at the image of a much smaller him in Bucky’s old military sweaters. They were the only thing without holes in them because they were renewed every time he was deployed, so they were the warmest thing in the house most of the time.

“I liked that, you wearing my stuff,” Bucky frowned, looking down at his knees, “I liked that a lot.”

Steve smiled sympathetically at the look of unsettledness that had spread over Bucky’s face. He put a hand on top of the soldier’s metal one. Bucky flinched away like Steve was made of lava and pulled the hand into a fist.

“Not the metal one,” Bucky insisted abruptly, “Don’t hold the metal one.”

Steve withdrew his hands.

“Why not?” He asked in curiosity, swapping and putting his hand on top of Bucky’s right one instead.

Bucky took a shaky breath and uncurled his metal fist, tentatively moving it so it hovered over Steve’s just slightly enough that the fingertips brushed his skin.

“It’s not…Bucky,” Bucky explained slowly, battling for words.

“And you want to hold my hand because that’s what you always used to do. It wasn’t metal when you used to do that, I don’t want you to forget what I feel like because…”  


Bucky’s throat tightened around his words and fell silent and dry. Steve nodded reassuringly, patiently rubbing circles into the skin of Bucky’s hand like a metronome, giving the soldier’s thoughts the rhythm and focus they lacked when they were allowed to fire away uncontrollably. Steve could see that chaos. Bucky’s thoughts seemed to bounce off of each other like a swarm of wasps.

“Because you used to love me,” Bucky’s voice was thin and thick with what sounded like approaching tears, “And I don’t know if you still do or not because I’m not a good person anymore.”

Steve loosened the grip on Bucky’s hand that had grown painfully tight, unnoticed by both of them. His heart was now audibly throbbing, a hot pulse in the back of his throat that stung his eyes and ached his nose. He did not trust his voice.

“I never stopped, Buck,” Steve whispered, “I never stopped loving you, not once.”

 

 


	4. Home

“Sergeant Barnes,” Jarvis’ voice echoed around the cell, “I am sensing that you are in distress.”

Bucky threw another furious punch against the wall of the cell, hitting frustratingly resilient brick under the thin white plaster and sending a cloud of dust into the air. His breath was coming in angry gusts and his cheeks were alight with hot, damp frustration.

“Shut UP!” Bucky screamed at the unmanned voice, gripping the wall and ignoring the pain in his knuckles as his fingers tore through the wall.

“Is that a request to mute my responses, Sergeant Barnes?” Jarvis asked patiently.

Bucky did not respond. He slumped down the wall and onto his knees, heavy sobs weakening his legs until they could not hold his weight.

_The Asset is insubordinate. Will be subject to physical castigation and compliance training._

“Get out of my head,” Bucky moaned through his tears, throwing his body forward so that his forehead connected with the wall, sending more chunks of plaster falling onto his knees.

The impact made his ears ring and his head pound, momentarily blocking out the sounds of the room.

He could hear the beeping of his heart monitor, his own anxious heartbeat in his ears, the uneasy mechanical hum of the arm, it was a constant reminder of who he had been forced to become. He send his head forward again, harder this time, enough that his back teeth clicked together painfully and his vision blurred.

_YOU’RE. MY. MISSION!_

Bucky timed his strikes against the wall with the sickening memory, the bruised and blurred image of Steve’s face underneath him, met with punch after punch. His head connected with the wall again, hitting brick instead of plaster. A wave of dizzying nausea hit him. One more time and he’d be out.

_The Asset has failed its mission. Will be subject to enforcement and reprogramming._

“Sergeant Barnes, I have reason to believe that you are a danger to yourself,” Jarvis’ voice sounded again, “I have informed Captain Roger’s of your current state. In the meantime I suggest that you attempt to regulate your breathing.”

Bucky took a deep breath that turned into another sob

“Buck, come back to me.”

Steve’s voice this time, from behind him. It was low and soft, almost inaudible above the ringing of Bucky’s ears. It was enough to pull the soldier back from another connection with the wall.

“I don’t want you hurting yourself, Bucky.”

Bucky heard the rub of denim that meant Steve had crouched down behind him. Solid hands found his shoulders and pulled him back gently but firmly, gripping his arms and guiding him away from the battered wall. He let them.

“There we go,” Steve whispered, “Try and slow your breathing down.”

Again, more sobs and gasps were all Bucky managed.

“I hurt you,” he choked out, words shaking with tears, “I hurt you so much.”

Steve shushed him, a low whisper of air that seemed to slow the world around him to a snail’s pace. The Captain pulled him back further until Bucky’s back was against his chest and wrapped his arms around him like a brace, secure and unmoving, but easy to release.

Bucky turned in the embrace so he was facing Steve, kneeling opposite him on the floor and buried his face into his neck.

“Am I allowed?” Bucky breathed out shakily, “Tell me if I’m allowed this.”

Steve tightened his arms around Bucky’s shoulders, unbothered by the metal on the left side. This was what he had missed for decades. Closeness, warmth. Something to thaw the frost he felt never really left him after he crashed that plane. He could almost picture a stubborn film of ice in his veins, clinging relentlessly. Bucky was the only thing that could melt something that deep-seated.

“Of course you are allowed,” Steve sighed, pressing his nose against the top of Bucky’s head and breathing in the familiar heat and shampoo smell.

Bucky nodded weakly and lifted his arms, wrapping them around Steve’s neck and coiling his fingers in the Captain’s hair. Steve shivered at the contact of metal fingers against his neck, but felt it oddly comforting. It felt right. He knew it should have felt wrong but somehow, anything connected to Bucky, no matter how inhuman became safe and familiar in Steve’s eyes. He did not care what the arm had done.

He just knew that its owner was his world.

“I’m gonna’ try and get you out of here,” Steve stated, his own voice thick with emotion he had not realised was so close.

“I’m going to try and take you home.”

 


	5. Staying

“Absolutely not, Captain,” Fury’s voice showed little room for persuasion.

Steve gritted his teeth, pressing his fingertips into his knees till they ached as he sat opposite Fury. The desk between them was a brick wall of stubbornness; Steve was getting nowhere.

“I can cope with him,” Steve assured for what felt like the hundredth time, “I think he needs this.”

Fury stood up and paced. Steve knew those movements and he could almost hear the lecture that was being percolated for him behind that eyepatch. Steve shifted in his seat, setting his feet into the ground solidly and tightening his grip on his knees.

 _Let the patronisation begin,_ he thought.

“Captain, I would expect much more foresight and rationality from someone of your calibre,” Fury’s voice had a nuance of pity that made Steve want to flip the desk in front of him clean over, sending the yellow folders, all marked in Russian and full of incriminating stories and fearmongering about Bucky into the air like a cloud of hornets.

“You are _blinded_ by sentimentality and you are undermining your own safety and the safety of the public because of it. That is not the Captain Rogers I am used to or the one that trust for that matter.”

Steve clenched his jaw tighter.

“I just want him to have a home,” Steve muttered at his hands, clasped in his lap, “Somewhere he can feel stable.”

Fury sighed and sat back down, opposite Steve.

“And until we have him incident-free, Captain, this is that place,” Fury gestured to the room around him.

Steve frowned, unmoving. He knew what he looked like. He knew he looked sulky and petulant. He knew his plan had more holes than it did benefits and he knew that he was acting like child. He could not have cared less.

“Captain,” Fury’s voice softened unexpectedly.

“Captain, are you telling me that if Sergeant Barnes attacked you, really went for you, that I could trust you to neutralise that threat, even if it meant hurting him as much as he was hurting you?”

Steve’s throat went dry and he felt the betraying heat he had been avoiding creep up his neck and cheeks.

_“Blushing like a Maine lobster, Stevie.”_

Bucky’s voice, the one that had not lost the Brooklyn husk that he missed so much rang in his ears like the back end of a concussion. He had always been a blusher, and Bucky had left no opportunity to tease him for it unexploited. Steve thought back to all of the secrets that had been clawed up and revealed unceremoniously by his tendency to change colour at the slightest sign of emotion. Bucky had used to press his cheeks and chuckles as his fingerprints would glow white against the hot skin for a few seconds before flushing pink again.

“No,” Steve admitted, the colour in his face telling him there was no point in doing otherwise, “No, I couldn’t do it.”

Steve stood up and walked towards the door.

“I’m sorry, Captain,” Fury’s voice seemed more earnest than Steve had ever heard, “But I can’t take the risk on this one.”

Steve nodded and left the office.

He levelled his breathing, but his chest rose and fell heavily all the same. He kept his head down and timed his breathing with his steps.

_In, out, in, out, in, out._

The Captain’s fists balled in his pockets.

“He’s asking for you, Cap,” Natasha jumped from behind Steve, slapping his shoulders to shake him from his upset.

“Yeah?” Steve sighed.

He would have to tell him.

“Bad news?” Nat squeezed Steve’s elbow amiably as she walked alongside him, “With Fury?”

Steve grimaced in response. He stopped at the familiar and infuriating cell door and took a slow breath before letting himself in. That at least, he was allowed to do now.

Steve stepped into the room, giving Natasha a quick squeeze of a hug before she skipped down the hall and off into the winding labyrinth of the SHIELD headquarters.

“You’re sad,” Bucky frowned at the Captain, “You’re hurt?”

Steve smiled and shook his head, sitting down next to Bucky his bed.

“You can’t come back with me, punk,” Steve squeezed Bucky’s hand and looked away when he saw the soldier’s face fall.

Bucky nodded and smiled weakly. A tight swell of shame and guilt twitched in his stomach.

This was his fault. Steve was sad and it was his fault for losing control.

_Insubordination spawns disorder._

“Bucky?” Steve squeezed his hand again, “Hey, stop biting your lip!”

Bucky released his bottom lip from between his teeth and breathed an apology. There was a crackle over the speakers that made them both jump.

“Captain Rogers, “Jarvis’ voice still made Bucky uncomfortable, “You’re on-site quarters have been modified.”

Steve frowned in confusion.

“What do you mean, Jarvis?” Steve asked, subconsciously looking up at the ceiling, “I never use my room here.”

“Director Nicholas. J. Fury arranged for you to stay there for the next fortnight,” Jarvis explained.

“And you will be sharing your quarters with Sergeant Barnes.”

 

 


End file.
